The invention relates to techniques for the delivery of electronic messages between hardware or software components across wireless and wireline networks, between mobile and non-mobile devices.
Message oriented middleware (MOM) has been available for many years. In October 1998, an industry standard emerged from Sun Microsystems, the Java Message Service (JMS). At a programming interface level, this standard describes how a messaging middleware is accessed from a Java application. The two main abstractions of JMS are xe2x80x9ctopicsxe2x80x9d (publish/subscribe messaging) and xe2x80x9cqueuesxe2x80x9d (point-to-point messaging). While the standard describes the interface to the messaging middleware, the implementation of the middleware is not specified. Also, integration of wireless mobile devices (such as phones, pagers, personal digital assistants or laptops) is not specified.
Existing messaging middleware allows one to access the middleware from nonmobile devices (personal computers or server computers) over wireline networks (Ethernet or Token Ring). These networks usually run communication protocols such as TCP/IP, HTTP or SSL. Supporting wireless mobile devices requires the vendor of the middleware to implement a message transmission protocol atop a wireless transport protocol (such as WAP, GSM, SMS, GPRS, or UMTS) and to integrate this message transmission protocol into the middleware.
This leads to limited applicability for the following reasons:
State of the art JMS messaging middleware requires more computer memory than is available on mobile devices.
Mobile devices, which are often disconnected from a corporate network, are unsupported in state of the art JMS messaging middleware products.
Wireless protocols such as WAP, SMS, GPRS or UMTS are not supported by state of the art JMS messaging middleware products, unless the TCP/IP, HTTP or SSL protocol is used atop those wireless protocols.
Though state of the art JMS messaging middleware products support communication protocols such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and SSL, they do not support any other communication protocols.
Further, there are considerable performance impacts, as TCP, HTTP or SSL were designed for wireline networks and thus do not perform well on wireless networks.
A first object of the invention is therefore to provide a system for the delivery of data between applications serving as clients and running on mobile wireless devices and applications running on computers of a wired network. Another object of the invention is to provide a method for delivering data between an application serving as client and running on a mobile wireless device and an application running on a computer of a wired network. Yet another object of the invention is to provide a computer program loadable into the memory of a computer usable for delivering messages between clients on mobile wireless devices and applications running on computers. A further object of the invention is to provide a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having thereon computer readable program code means for implementing on a computer connected to a wired computer network. Still another object of the invention is to provide a computer program directly loadable into the memory of a mobile device and allowing the mobile device to access a messaging middleware product according to the state of the art, without needing to load that messaging middleware into the memory of the mobile device entirely.
The messaging proxy system outlined in this disclosure is a major technological advancement enabling users of state of the art messaging middleware products to send and receive messages to and from mobile devices, over any wireless transport protocol, without requiring that the state of the art messaging middleware be loaded into the memory of the mobile devices.
The system for running said message proxy installation includes a message proxy implemented by a computer program with a system architecture comprising at least one pluggable protocol adapter. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the proxy further comprises at least one pluggable database adapter.
The invention also comprises a thin message client computer program directly loadable into the memory of a mobile device. This thin message client program allows a mobile device to exchange message and command tokens with a message oriented middleware according to the state of the art, by using the proxy computer program as an intermediary between the thin client and the message oriented middleware and thereby using at least one wireless transport protocol. The thin message client computer program embodies a system architecture of at least one pluggable protocol adapter. Preferably, it also embodies a system architecture of at least one pluggable database adapter.